Kaliope's WoW Crafting Blog

Investigative Reporter for World of Warcraft Tradeskills

Tonight I discovered a new vendor on the Isle of Quel'Danas and I'm terribly excited. Perhaps Blizzard isn't as evil and uncaring as I previously believed with regard to the epic Jewelcrafting trinkets after all. Since my last foray on the test server, it appears that the Inn has been "reclaimed" by the Shattered Sun Offensive and is now available for player use. This is helpful because now we have an appropriate place to bind and/or camp if we so choose. We also gain access to a mailbox and stablemaster, which were annoyingly absent in the new zone. There's also a new daily quest giver inside, as well as a Jewelcrafting vendor. Meet Shaani:

Shaani sells epic gems for 15 Badges of Justice. The same epic gems that drop in Black Temple and are required by the epic trinket recipes. I love Shaani =) As you may be able to see by clicking the above image for a larger view, Shaani also sells gem-cutting recipes. Epic gem cuts, the exact same ones that come from the Black Temple. Blizzard has now made them available to players with SSO rep. If you look closely, you will note that some are already available to me as I am now Friendly with SSO and can purchase a whopping 13 recipes from her. Another nine recipes are unlocked at Honored, which I'd venture to guess that aggressive folks could hit in a few days. Only four are unlocked at Revered, but you may recall that the Quartermaster for SSO (listed in my previous JC post) has a bunch of recipes at Revered as well, including the meta gems and trinkets, so Revered will still be a major faction point for JCs. At Exalted the final eight recipes are unlocked and I believe that would actually complete the full set of BT gem cuts for those still lacking them.

Needless to say I'm amazed that Blizzard is actually making these recipes available to solo players via the SSO faction. I would've been happy just to see the epic gems being sold this way, but giving casuals access to the recipes as well is pretty huge in my view. Now I realize some JCs will likely complain that anyone can purchase an uncut gem, thereby allowing crafters to only collect a service fee instead of the full gem price. But I think this just clarifies that Blizz considers Jewelcrafting to be a service profession and not an item profession. And realistically, the folks who are currently selling epic gems for insane amounts of money didn't collect those gems alone, so they are actually profiting from the sweat equity of 24 other players. By adding the epic gems to the vendor, it allows anyone to purchase the gem they need with their hard work (badges) and enables the JC to make money from their hard work by charging a cutting fee.

As for me, I can't wait for this patch to go live so I can start farming SSO rep and get these new recipes for my guildies!!

Well, I will like to make the point here again, that some folks really just moam and whine about their professions. Getting the epic gems so "easy" is a slap in the face to all the other crafters. Even just getting the pattern involves going into a 25 man instance and possible collecting another random drop from there. Now Jewelcrafter can charge insane amounts of money for their badges.

I'm happy for the JC, I usually try to buy the uncut gems from the AH and get a guildy to cut it for me. I usually give them a tip for that, and sometimes my guildy palinly refuses to get it. Just be sensible to the folks that needs to run a million instances to get their epic gems,, and don't say: "I deservea 100 gp tip for cutting an epic gem".

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